It is said that behind every business there is a story worth knowing, and behind every man is an ocean of experience and knowledge.

Troy Burris, a Russellville resident and founder of Burris Inc., is a man with a story to tell.

Burris was born in 1921 in the small community of Buttermilk, approximately 25 minutes northwest of Russellville. He was raised on a farm with his brother, Roy, and two sisters Ruth and Ruby.

“Cotton, corn and cattle. That’s pretty much what we had on our farm,” Burris said. “We also had horses, hogs, geese and ducks. It was a working farm.”

Burris smiled as he reminisced about his childhood on the farm.

Burris and his siblings attended Mount Vernon Elementary School until the ninth grade, when they moved to the school in Appleton. Burris graduated from Hector High School in 1939, at which point he and his brother, Roy, joined the Arkansas National Guard.

“We joined the National Guard right out of high school,” Burris said. “It was me, my brother and our sister all going to Arkansas Tech. Joining the National Guard was the only way that we could get the money to pay for schooling.

During that time, Burris’s National Guard unit was activated and mobilized. Burris’s unit was sent to El Paso, Texas for a five-month basic training camp and then transfered to a naval base at Dutch Harbor, Ak.

“We packed up everything we had in El Paso and left for Dutch Harbor,” Burris said. “Me, my brother and the other guys traveled across the country to the state of Washington. We went to Fort Lewis in Seattle.”

Burris and his comrades waited at the port in Seattle for nine days. Eventually, a cattle boat turned troop carrier picked the soldiers up and went to Seward Harbor in Alaska. Once again, the soldiers waited. This time, it was for an entire month.

“You see, there was a buzz going around that there was a Japanese submarine stalking the bay area, so the navy boys had destroyers scouting the area,” he said. “So we waited at the harbor for a while, and eventually one of the destroyers on patrol came and escorted us across the bay to Dutch Harbor.”

Burris and his company would spend the next 11 months at Dutch Harbor.

“There were about 10,000 troops stationed in Dutch Harbor,” Burris recalled. “There were about 20 Marine guards, I think, and several Navy Air Corps squadrons, too.”

Burris and his brother were assigned to a battery of long-range, 75-millimeter cannons guarding the Alaskan coastline. Burris was assigned to long-range gun No. 2, while his brother was assigned to gun No. 3.

When the Japanese initiated their invasion plans for the Aleutian Islands, Dutch Harbor was their first target. On June 3, 1942, the Japanese launched an aerial assault on the base. The attack consisted of torpedo bombers and Zero fighters.

“It all happened really fast,” Burris said. “We couldn’t fire our long-range guns at the Zeros because at that close of a range, the shrapnel from our own shell would kill us.”

Burris said he vividly remembered being strafed numerous times by Zero fighters.

“Those Zeros would fly in at us and shoot at us with their machine guns,” he said. “What was even worse, they would shoot at us with their 40-millimeter cannons. When we knew they were coming in, we’d all hide under the steel platform beneath our gun and cross our fingers that we wouldn’t get hit.”

Unfortunately, not everyone was as lucky.

“One of those Zero fighters came down and started shooting its 40-millimeter cannons at the troops and anti-aircraft batteries,” Burris said. “The Zero made a direct hit on one of the anti-aircraft machine gun placements, and the shrapnel killed the two soldiers that were manning the gun. One other guy in our group was hit in the leg with shrapnel, but he made it out okay.”

The attack on Dutch Harbor ended as quickly as it began, but it was far from over. The very next day, the Japanese returned, this time much more organized.

“I remember, I was standing guard duty that night when I heard a lot of chatter on the field telephone. So I picked up the phone and listened in,” Burris recalled. “They were saying something about unidentified planes heading towards the harbor, and so I dropped the phone and started throwing rocks at my crew quarters to get the guys up there by the guns.”

Within moments, the Japanese attack began. Plane engines roared and falling bombs whistled, muffled intermittently by the fire of the Dutch Harbor anti-aircraft batteries.

“They hit us hard,” Burris shook his head. “From where we were, we could see the barracks flying up into the sky as bombs hit them. It was scary, but it was even more sad, because we knew that there were still men inside the buildings.”

In the midst of the combat, Burris never lost sight of his brother, Roy, who was manning the long-range gun to his right.

“Each time we would come out of cover, I would look over to his gun and make sure he was okay,” Burris said.

When the Japanese aerial assault finally ended, the harbor’s oil tanks were left burning, its hospital all but demolished, and a troop ship was severely damaged.

Burris remembers, to this day, what he recalled as the saddest day of his life.

“I remember looking across the coast there, and seeing soldiers load 32 caskets into trucks,” he said. “It was the saddest day of my life to see those coffins with the American flags draped on top of them, because I knew then that those were young men that would never get to go home and see their families.”

For the next several weeks, Dutch Harbor was all but cut off from the rest of the world. Supply ships were withheld due to the risk of being sunk by Japanese forces.

“We had baked beans three times a day,” Burris said. “Morning, noon and night, it was beans, beans, beans. By the time it was over, I never wanted to see a bean again. I still don’t eat beans to this day.”

Finally, after 11 months at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Burris’s company was relieved and sent back to the mainland.

“It was good to come home again,” he said. “I was happy, really happy to see my family and friends.”

After the war, Burris served several more years in the military as a sports officer, as which he would travel around to different military bases and organize sporting events for military personnel.

After the Korean War in 1953, Burris purchased the H.D. Coffee Supply store in downtown Russellville and started his own business, Burris Inc.

“I’ve seen a lot of struggle over the years,” Burris said.

“But I have tried to do what was right at every turn. I’ll never forget the boys that I served with in the Army. They are a big reason that I’m here right now today.”